I use MagicDisc to mount my Blu-ray ISOs and play them on my PC using PowerDVD 8 Ultra. I use Movie Collector to track which movies I own and a great feature of this is the ability to link to the movie on the HDD and launch it. Works great with DVDs. But Blu-ray movies on my HDD are saved as ISO files. For consistancy, I created a batch file to mount the Blu-ray ISO and I setup Vista to autoplay a movie when inserted into a drive. Having a PS3 I started searching for an excellent Media Server to stream my PC HDD DVD and Blu-ray movies. I came accross the PS3 Media Server and it works well with my DVDs. However, as I understand the Ps3 cannont handle ISOs. What I've noticed however, is that the PS3 Media Server does see my mounted virtual drives. So, I'm wondering if there would be a way for the PS3 Media Server to do something similar to what i've done on my PC with a batch file.

Auto mount the Blu-ray ISO and stream. Not sure if Transcoding would be necessary since the PS3 handles Blu-ray playback. If there is no solution, I would have to mount the Blu-ray ISO on the PC manually and then I could see the content on the PS3 via PS3 Media Server. Thoughts would be appreciated.

wvercimak wrote:I use MagicDisc to mount my Blu-ray ISOs and play them on my PC using PowerDVD 8 Ultra. I use Movie Collector to track which movies I own and a great feature of this is the ability to link to the movie on the HDD and launch it. Works great with DVDs. But Blu-ray movies on my HDD are saved as ISO files. For consistancy, I created a batch file to mount the Blu-ray ISO and I setup Vista to autoplay a movie when inserted into a drive. Having a PS3 I started searching for an excellent Media Server to stream my PC HDD DVD and Blu-ray movies. I came accross the PS3 Media Server and it works well with my DVDs. However, as I understand the Ps3 cannont handle ISOs. What I've noticed however, is that the PS3 Media Server does see my mounted virtual drives. So, I'm wondering if there would be a way for the PS3 Media Server to do something similar to what i've done on my PC with a batch file.

Auto mount the Blu-ray ISO and stream. Not sure if Transcoding would be necessary since the PS3 handles Blu-ray playback. If there is no solution, I would have to mount the Blu-ray ISO on the PC manually and then I could see the content on the PS3 via PS3 Media Server. Thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks

Well at the moment you'd have to mount them manually, as you said.

You'll get to see the disc structure, and inside the "STREAM" directory you'll find a couple of .m2ts files, the biggest of which will be the movie.

There's no current way that I know of to stream the Bluray as if you'd play the disc in the ps3 itself. I.e. you won't get a menu, and you won't be able to select the subtitles or audio track (extras are played by selecting one of the smaller m2ts files). No transcoding is necessary to play the m2ts file as it is though.

I can see this would be a nightmare because some studios, like Disney, break up the movie into a hundred different m2ts files and you have to figure out the order they play! Honestly, I don't know how it would be possible to do that with the media server.

TwinMoonsAnime wrote:I can see this would be a nightmare because some studios, like Disney, break up the movie into a hundred different m2ts files and you have to figure out the order they play! Honestly, I don't know how it would be possible to do that with the media server.

You'd have to use the playlist files (MPLS) for starters. These, however, are everything but transparent. You could make an educated guess, based on SD/HD content, length, etc.; but that's not necessarily a guarantee you'd get the 'main feature'. And if you want a real nightmare, try and decode the BD Java menus, to see which is which. Sometimes, for instance, there's episodic content which resides all in a single m2ts; you would per se need to decipher the BD Java menu structure to determine at which file position the episodes start. My Macross Frontier Blu-Rays, for example, are organized like that.

OK, I read this and was wondering: could somebody please summarize for me what I read? In other words, can I play blu-ray ISO's created by AnyDVD as long as I mount them using something like Roxio? Thanks.

If the above can not be done, can I rip a blu-ray to a Video_TS folder using AnyDVD and play that?

Do you mean that DOC file renamed to e.g. WAV file will play?You can't rip Blu-ray to "VIDEO_TS" (DVD) format. DVD ISO and Blu-Ray ISO is same ISO format but VIDEO format stored in it is totally different.But you can play .m2ts files in Blu-Ray structure separately

Hmmm, I have AnyDVD and know it will rip blu-rays to both folders or an ISO file. I haven't ripped anything yet, but I plan on starting tonight. I didn't know that the folder structure for blu-ray was different than standard DVD's, but I guess I should have assumed that. Anyway, I am not normally this thick (really, I'm not), but are you're saying both rip to ISO AND rip to folder will work? Thanks.

Not only structure is different but also video format/codec. Blu-ray uses .H264 or VC-1 (rarely MPEG2) video codec but DVD-Video uses MPEG2.When you will check directory \BDMV\STREAM\ of your Blu-ray, you will find m2ts files there which are natively played by PS3

Last edited by ExSport on Sun Sep 13, 2009 3:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ExSport wrote:Not only structure is different but also video format/codec. Blu-ray uses .H264 or VC-1 video codec but DVD-Video uses MPEG2.When you will check directory \BDMV\STREAM\ of your Blu-ray, you will find m2ts files there which are natively played by PS3